I really enjoy your back story for Shepherd Book. This is something like the fourth or fifth time I've read your Horseshoe Nail series through, and your version of Book's life prior to Serenity is, to my opinion, so much better than canon. Book being an idealist kid who joined the Marshals when the government was for the good of the people seems so much more in line with his character. Which I noticed you slipped in your reasoning within this chapter, Book's sense of justice and his need to do his part, amongst other qualities. "I don't give a half-hump if you're innocent, so where does that leave you?" always seemed to me to be something that you say and then regret until the end of your days, than being a callous non-sequitur from a platform of hate and self-righteousness as it was in the comics. It seemed to me a betrayal of Book's character that he was a spy sabotaging the Alliance on behalf of the rebels. I couldn't figure how the man he was current with Firefly and Serenity could have been born out of that twisted ideology-even if he had found God, that transformed man would still have a reconciled a version of his original moral structure with his faith. It would have resulted in an entirely different character from Book as we know him. Mostly, it seemed Whedon cared more about perpetuating "the Alliance is EVIL," and refusing to allow the Alliance to have a dynamic storyline borne of good intent-all at the expense of Shepherd Book's character.

Natrix chapter 22 . 11/15/2014

This is how it shod have happened. Why can't you be joss whedon? Such a great story, there was enough action and tension even having watched the movie. I don't think I've read a story where every character was saved and managed to pull it off without it tainting the writing. But you did it, and you did it all classy like too!

This was epic. Thank you so much for writing it. Granted, you paint Jayne a bit smarter than I think he was in canon, but not a genius. Everyone else is right on target. And the sheer amount of schmoop you managed to pack in has me at serious risk of going D'awwwwwww for the rest of tr day.

Good point - there was a hole between what Simon told them on the how and what was shown in the BDM. Good explanation for it.

So...Mr Universe may or may not die. He likely won't be able to leave the recording in Lenore, but he can probably rig up a speech synthesizer or just an onscreen typed note. Be interesting to see where this goes.

And, of course, a few bazillion Reavers and Alliance and a ruttin' huge space battle ain't nothing compared to the storm of go we that's going to hit when the crew finds out that River and Jayne are together.

Nicely handled and I'm glad we still get to have our giant Reaver vs Alliance battle...it just better not end up with Wash dead again! You've been fixing everything else in this story so you can damn well fix that too.

Speaking of fixing - wouldn't you think that the Alliance would try some small scale experiments with the Pax before turning it on an entire planet? Something like:

"We put it into a 10-person research vessel and they all lay down and died. Well, except for that one guy who went nuts and ate everyone else."
"Huh, interesting. Well, maybe we should cancel the Phase II trial on Miranda."
"Oh yeah, good point. I hope they don't cut our funding."

I never was clear on how she managed to pull up a picture of a planet that was explicitly expunged from the records. I mean, it's not going to be on Wikipedia, right? And I doubt she just hacked some super secret Alliance database in two minutes from the Cortex connection on a tramp freighter. So where did she get it? Bit of a plot hole in the BDM.

Well now, that was a much more satisfying conclusion to that scene. And I think it will do Mal good to hear that River considers him a father. Zoe is the only one that he really trusts; he likes Kaylee and he loves Inara even if he won't admit it, but he won't let either of them close. Maybe now that River had changed how he thinks of her, maybe he can let her in.

I'm curious to see what they do with the Operative. Can't random him. Torture isn't in Mal's playbook, and likely wouldn't work anyway. Perhaps use his credentials to break in somewhere and erase data on the Tams. Anyway, I'll see.